Holding two conferences back to back to save attendees time and travel costs.

In order to save attendees time and money, in 2013, the American Wholesale Marketers Association (AWMA) is co-locating two recently launched meetings—the AWMA/C-Metrics Convenience Industry Outlook Forum and the AWMA/DEF Harmonizing Assortment program.

The Outlook Forum will take place June 24–25 and the Harmonizing Assortment program will take place June 25–27. Both meetings will be held at the Loews New Orleans Hotel in New Orleans.

“We recognized a lot of overlap in the attendance at these two meetings, both of which were launched in 2012. By holding them back-to-back in the same hotel in New Orleans, we are able to get a great rate from the hotel. We can also save attendees who want to go to both meetings time and travel costs,” said AWMA President Scott Ramminger.

“There is a synergistic aspect to the meetings. The Outlook Forum is obviously all about convenience industry sales data. The Harmonizing Assortment program takes data as a foundation and talks about how distributors can take action on it to improve profits for themselves and their retailers. It makes sense to attend both meetings, but regardless of whether attendees choose one or both, they will benefit from the cost savings we get from the hotel by co-locating the events,” Ramminger said.

“We wanted to find an initiative within our industry that can create change,” explained John Guarnieri, vice-president, Albert Guarnieri & Co., and AWMA Education and Research Committee co-chair. “The goal is to drive better profits, reduce SKU lineups, and use solid data to make those decisions.”

At the C-Metrics Outlook Forum, the latest actual industry-wide sales information will be presented as developed through AWMA InfoMetrics and projected to the universe of 146,000 c-stores nationwide via C-Metrics.

At Harmonizing Assortment, industry consultants will guide attendees through the process of using the data to create the best possible category management strategies for retailer customers.

“InfoMetrics provides a centralized tool that distributors can use to put changes into place,” said Robert Sincavich, president, Sledd Co., Wheeling, W.Va., and committee co-chair.

The American Wholesale Marketers Association (AWMA) is the only international trade organization working on behalf of convenience distributors in the U.S.